Opinion on the draft general budget of the European Union for the financial year 2025 – all sections

3.10.2024

Mr Johan Van Overtveldt

Chair

Committee on Budgets

BRUSSELS

Subject: Opinion on the draft general budget of the European Union for the financial year 2025 – all sections (COM(2024)0300 – C10-00482/2024 – 2024/0176 (BUD))

Dear Chair,

Under the procedure referred to above, the Committee on Culture and Education has been asked to submit an opinion to your committee. At its meeting of 23 July 2024, the committee decided to send the opinion in the form of a letter. They considered the matter and endorsed the opinion by written procedure on 12 September 2024.

The Committee on Culture and Education has adopted the following position on 3 October 2024 and I call on the Committee on Budgets, as the responsible committee, to incorporate the following suggestions into its motion for a resolution.

Yours sincerely,

Nela Riehl

OPINION

1. Strongly opposes Council’s cuts in the 2025 budget, particularly to the Erasmus+ programme, one of the most successful Union programmes that strategically invests in young people’s future;

2. Decides therefore to increase budget lines of Erasmus+ (+ EUR 58 million), Creative Europe (+ EUR 48 million) and the European Solidarity Corps (ESC) (+ EUR 5 million);

3. Highlights the need to support the cultural and creative sectors and industries, journalists and media professionals and the educational sector to manage multiple crises, including the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine and inflation;

4. Underlines the role of Erasmus+ and ESC in encouraging young people to engage in Europe's democratic life; support young people involved in volunteering and solidarity actions; stresses the need to reinforce the level of operating grants for youth organisations, support citizenship education and to accommodate increasing oversubscription in ESC;

5. Highlights leading initiatives in Erasmus+ that contribute to build a European Education Area through mobility and cooperation in education and learning; stresses necessary efforts to widen participation and to meet inclusivity, green, digitalisation and mobility targets;

6. Emphasises the need to support sport under Erasmus+ to promote its role in improving physical and mental health and social inclusion, and to fight discrimination;

7. Strongly opposes any possible attempts to decrease funding for the Erasmus+ programme by the Commission at the end of the current Multiannual Financial Framework;

8. Highlights that Creative Europe, the only EU Programme directly supporting the cultural and creative sector and industries, needs a significant reinforcement of all its strands given the sectors’ continued efforts to recover after the pandemic;

9. Calls for a significant reinforcement of the Culture Strand, which is highly over-subscribed, including the long overdue additional funding for the European Capitals of Cultures (ECOC) (Prize of EUR 1.5 million for the last 15 years) and for the necessary resources to align the strand with the priorities and the EU Work Plan for Culture 2023-2026;

10. Recalls that the Media strand accompanies the implementation of the AVMSD and of the recently adopted EMFA, the latter was not foreseen when the MFF line was originally calculated;

11. Underlines the need to support the audiovisual sector and European media talents by promoting their diversity and supporting their economic sustainability and fair remuneration in the digital environment;

12. Reiterates the need to support editorial and news media, including journalists that are confronted by structural and technological changes, resulting in rampant disinformation and expanding news deserts;

13. Recalls the importance of the citizens’ engagement strand in CERV, in particular as regards town twinning and remembrance activities.

ANNEX: ENTITIES OR PERSONS FROM WHOM THE RAPPORTEUR HAS RECEIVED INPUT

The rapporteur for the opinion declares under her exclusive responsibility that she did not receive input from any entity or person to be mentioned in this Annex pursuant to Article 8 of Annex I to the Rules of Procedure.